Sunday, July 30, 2006

I got a spam today containing the popular scam about the credit union "satisfaction survey," where they ask you a few questions (Are you familiar with the services your credit union provides, how satisfied are you with your credit union, what is your PIN on your ATM card, where do you keep your valuable jewelry, when are you next going on vacation — that sort of thing) with the promise of a $50 reward as a thank-you for participating in the survey. I hope that you already know this, but just in case, think about what you're being asked to divulge, and ask yourself if the offer really sounds too good to be true. Fifty bucks for answering fewer than a dozen survey questions? Are you kidding?

What distresses me most, though, is that I got a copy of this scam back on July 2 [a.k.a. 2006-07-02] and reported it to the abuse desk of the ISP where the phony web site is hosted. Almost a month later, I get another spam with the exact same phony web site, and I find that the ISP has not yet shut down the scammers. I'd call that "accessory to wire fraud," personally, but I'm not a lawyer. All I can tell you for certain is that evrocom.net is not a responsible netizen, leaving a criminally fraudulent web site operating 27 days after being notified. At least saglac.qc.ca — the host of the redirected phony web site in early July — gets some credit, because the site on Evrocom now redirects to a different server in Québec, cadre.qc.ca. Evrocom gets a special public raspberry [plllllt!!] for letting the spammers and the scammers have free rein on their systems.